Upgrade Planning

For a UFS file system, you can upgrade a system by using one of three different upgrade methods: Live Upgrade, the Oracle Solaris installation program, and JumpStart.
For a ZFS root pool, you must use Live Upgrade to upgrade. For information about ZFS upgrades, see Chapter 11, Live Upgrade for ZFS (Planning), in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.

The upgrade methods for Solaris 8, Solaris 9, and Oracle Solaris 10 are:

Live Upgrade – Upgrades a system by creating and upgrading a copy of the running system
Oracle Solaris installation program – Provides an interactive upgrade with a graphical user interface or command-line interface
JumpStart method – Provides an automated upgrade

Upgrade Programs

You can perform a standard interactive upgrade with the Oracle Solaris installation program or an unattended upgrade with the JumpStart installation method. Live Upgrade enables you to upgrade a running system.

Upgrade Program	Description	For More Information
Live Upgrade	Enables you to create a copy of the currently running system. The copy can be upgraded and then a reboot switches the upgraded copy to become the currently running system. Using Live Upgrade reduces the downtime that is required to upgrade the Oracle Solaris OS. Also, Live Upgrade can prevent problems with upgrading. For example, you can recover from an upgrade if the power fails because the copy being upgraded is not the currently running system.	To plan for disk space allocation when using Live Upgrade, see Live Upgrade Requirements in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.
Oracle Solaris installation program	Guides you through an upgrade with an interactive GUI.	Chapter 2, Installing With the Oracle Solaris Installation Program For UFS File Systems (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Basic Installations.
JumpStart program	Provides an automated upgrade. A profile file and optional preinstallation and postinstallation scripts provide the information required. When creating a JumpStart profile for an upgrade, specify `install_type upgrade`. You must test the JumpStart profile against the system's disk configuration and currently installed software before you upgrade. Use the `pfinstall -D` command on the system that you are upgrading to test the profile. You cannot test an upgrade profile by using a disk configuration file.	For more information about testing the upgrade option, refer to Testing a Profile in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: JumpStart Installations For more information about creating an upgrade profile, see Profile Examples in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: JumpStart Installations For more information about performing an upgrade, see Performing a JumpStart Installation in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: JumpStart Installations

Upgrading and Patching Limitations

The following table lists limitations when you upgrade a system under some conditions.

Issue	Description	For More Information
For ZFS root pools, there are other upgrade limitations	You can only use Live Upgrade to upgrade ZFS root pools.	For requirements and limitations. see Chapter 11, Live Upgrade for ZFS (Planning), in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.
Upgrading to a different software group	You cannot upgrade your system to a software group that is not installed on the system. For example, if you previously installed the End User Oracle Solaris Software Group on your system, you cannot use the upgrade option to upgrade to the Developer Oracle Solaris Software Group. However, during the upgrade, you can add software to the system that is not part of the currently installed software group.	For more information about software groups, see Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups.
Upgrading when non-global zones are installed	You can upgrade a system that has non-global zones installed with the Oracle Solaris installation program, Live Upgrade, or JumpStart. The following limitations apply: Live Upgrade is the recommended program to upgrade or patch a system. Other upgrade programs might require extensive upgrade time because of the time required to complete the upgrade increases linearly with the number of installed non-global zones. If you are patching a system with Live Upgrade, you do not have to take the system to single-user mode and you can maximize your system's uptime. When you use a Flash Archive to install, an archive that contains non-global zones is not properly installed on your system.	For requirements and limitations, see Upgrading With Non-Global Zones.
Patching with Live Upgrade from the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 OS	You cannot use Live Upgrade to patch an Oracle Solaris 10 inactive boot environment when the active boot environment is running the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 OS. Live Upgrade will invoke the patch utilities on the active boot partition to patch the inactive boot partition. The Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 patch utilities are unaware of Oracle Solaris Zones, Service Management Facility (SMF), and other enhancements in the Oracle Solaris 10 OS. Therefore, the patch utilities fail to correctly patch an inactive Oracle Solaris 10 boot environment. If you are using Live Upgrade to upgrade a system from the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 OS to the Oracle Solaris 10 OS, you must first activate the Oracle Solaris 10 boot environment before patching. After the Oracle Solaris 10 boot environment is activated, you can either patch the active boot environment directly or set up another inactive boot environment and patch that one by using Live Upgrade.	For more information about patching with Live Upgrade, see Adding Patches to or Removing Patches From a Network Installation Image on a Boot Environment in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning
Upgrading with Veritas file systems	The Oracle Solaris interactive installation and JumpStart programs do not present you with the opportunity to upgrade a system when you are using Veritas VxVM file systems under these conditions: If the root file system to be upgraded is under Veritas control. For example, if the root (`/`) file system is mounted on a `/dev/vx/...` device. If any Oracle Solaris software is installed on any file system that is under Veritas control. For example, if the `/usr` file system is mounted on a `/dev/vx/...` device.	To upgrade when Veritas VxVM is configured, use one of the following methods: Use Live Upgrade with the procedure described in, How to Upgrade When Running Veritas VxVm in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning. If you have non-global zones installed, you must migrate the affected file systems from VxVM file systems to UFS file systems. You cannot use the Live Upgrade procedure in the previous procedure.

Installing a Flash Archive Instead of Upgrading

The Flash Archive installation feature provides a method of creating a copy of the whole installation from a master system that can be replicated on many clone systems. This copy is called a flash archive. You can install an archive by using any installation program.

Caution - A flash archive cannot be properly created when a non-global zone is installed. The Solaris Flash feature is not compatible with zones partitioning technology. If you create a flash archive, the resulting archive is not installed properly when the archive is deployed under these conditions:

The archive is created in a non-global zone
The archive is created in a global zone that has non-global zones installed

Creating an Archive That Contains Large Files

The default copy method that is used when you create a Flash Archive is the cpio utility. Individual file sizes cannot be greater than 4 GB. If you have large individual files, the flarcreate command with the -L pax option uses the pax utility to create an archive without limitations on individual file sizes. Individual file sizes can be greater than 4 GB.

For information about installing an archive using the various installation programs, see the following resources:

Upgrading With Disk Space Reallocation

The upgrade option in the Oracle Solaris installation program and the upgrade keyword in the JumpStart program provide the ability to reallocate disk space. This reallocation automatically changes the sizes of the disk slices. You can reallocate disk space if the current file systems do not have enough space for the upgrade. For example, file systems might need more space for the upgrade for the following reasons:

The Oracle Solaris software group that is currently installed on the system contains new software in the new release. Any new software that is included in a software group is automatically selected to be installed during the upgrade.
The size of the existing software on the system has increased in the new release.

The auto-layout feature attempts to reallocate the disk space to accommodate the new size requirements of the file system. Initially, auto-layout attempts to reallocate space based on a set of default constraints. If auto-layout cannot reallocate space, you must change the constraints on the file systems.

Note - Auto-layout does not have the ability to “grow” file systems. Auto-layout reallocates space by using the following process:

Backing up required files on the file systems that need to change.
Repartitioning the disks on the basis of the file system changes.
Restoring the backup files before the upgrade happens.

If you are using the Oracle Solaris installation program and auto-layout cannot determine how to reallocate the disk space, you must use the JumpStart program to upgrade.
If you are using the JumpStart method to upgrade and you create an upgrade profile, disk space might be a concern. If the current file systems do not contain enough disk space for the upgrade, you can use the backup_media and layout_constraint keywords to reallocate disk space. For an example of how to use the backup_media and layout_constraint keywords in a profile, refer to Profile Examples in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: JumpStart Installations.

Using the Patch Analyzer When Upgrading

The Patch Analyzer performs an analysis on your system if you want to upgrade to one of these releases that follow the initial Solaris 10 3/05 release:

Solaris 10 1/06 release
Solaris 10 6/06 release

If you are already running the Oracle Solaris OS and have installed individual patches, upgrading to a subsequent Oracle Solaris 10 release causes the following:

Any patches that were supplied as part of one of the releases are reapplied to your system. You cannot back out these patches.
Any patches that were previously installed on your system and are not included in one of the releases are removed.

You can use the Patch Analyzer to determine which patches, if any, will be removed. For detailed instructions about using the Patch Analyzer, refer to Appendix D, Using the Patch Analyzer When Upgrading (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris 10 1/13 Installation Guide: Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.

Backing Up And Restarting Systems For an Upgrade

Backing up your existing file systems before you upgrade to the Oracle Solaris OS is highly recommended. If you copy file systems to removable media, such as tape, you can safeguard against data loss, damage, or corruption.

For detailed instructions describing how to back up your system, refer to Chapter 19, Backing Up and Restoring UFS File Systems (Overview/Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.
For information about how to back up your system when non-global zones are installed, see Chapter 27, Oracle Solaris Zones Administration (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones.

In previous releases, the restart mechanism enabled you to continue an upgrade after a loss of power or other similar problem. Starting with the Solaris 10 10/08 release, if you have a problem, your upgrade might not restart.

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